Difference between revisions of "Kadō"

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Yamamoto Miho is 'adopted', in a sense - she never had parents to begin with, but commissioners, in the form of Yamamoto Kasumi, Yamamoto Kenji, and Fujimori Hideo.
Yamamoto Miho is 'adopted', in a sense - she never had parents to begin with, but commissioners, in the form of Yamamoto Kasumi, Yamamoto Kenji, and Fujimori Hideo.


Her creation was cocktail of ambition, delusion, chance, and wealth. As much as it's hidden, in the higher ranks of most corporations, incompetence abounds - the ultra-rich use their power to shield themselves from consequences, and as wealth is inherited along their lines, new generations enter an environment where they need never acknowledge mistakes. Kasumi and Kenji were (and are) traditionalist, conservative Japanese, intensely racist, specist, and sexist. Seeking more power to themselves and their clan, their position eventually drew the machinations of a secretive magician who wanted to draw on the resources of a triple-A corporation.
The Yamamotos were in the more Japanese-centric aspects of EVO, which look back to its original roots as Yamatetsu. Despite that, their biases against metahumanity were limited to the lingering momentum of peer pressure.


While actual members of the Black Lodge are few, each one certainly has their own net of contacts and resources. Hideo, part of one of Japan's cells, sought out connections to MCT both for his own benefits and to help encourage anti-elven/draconic ideologies, given the corporation's conservatism. The plan eventually proposed was to create a scion who could compete with the machinations of the immortal enemies of humanity, utilizing the magician's esoteric knowledge with the Yamamoto clan's resources to accomplish this.
As wealthy executives, they had more than enough resources to draw on to immerse themselves in their culture's spiritual elements - particularly in the lavish membership of the Ordo Maximus. Mundane themselves, they were happy to have their power and wealth purchase the trappings of Shintoist and Onmyodo spirituality.


While nominally human, the genetic blueprint was spliced heavily with elven aspects - enough so to leave the result closer to an elf, genetically, than a human, despite showing none of the signs. By stealing the advantages of their foes and placing them in a human, it was thought that this could allow them to, for an extent, fight fire with fire, bringing some of what the elves can bring to bear back against them. Immortality was arranged for when the subject would be of age, allowing them to carry on this legacy for humanity throughout generations. While ghilani vrykolakiviridae is an imperfect form of immortality, it also offers the chance to stimulate and encourage magical development; the need to maintain its function by sacrificing metahumans was considered negligable as a complication, because isn't it normal for corporate operations to spend people to maintain? The subject's sex was decided to be female not in spite of their sexist views, but because of it: creating an immortal god-king of humanity would be running down the same follies that trusting the elves or dragons or their minions would. Rather, by using a woman, the sex unfit for leadership, she could serve as an everlasting second across generations - executing the orders of the men in control and maintaining their estates with impossible expertise, always under the command of true human will.
It was one of these Shintoists, a proper member, who sought to make a deal with them. Yamamotos Kasumi and Kenji held power over a significant biotech R&D subsidiary, and Fujimori Hideo wanted access to those resources. Miho was thought up as a project to both make use of those resources and establish stronger connections, posed as a way to help make each side of EVO's base a bit more palatable to the other... and to further their own hopes.


Hideo only partly believed in the ideology sold to the strongly prejudiced clan. While certainly a boon against what lurking evils the Black Lodge nobly fights in the shadows, having a lasting apprentice who could be guided and taught the way he preferred would be of just as much value to him, and the expanded access to MCT facilities in the process of pushing this through would have many more far-reaching benefits than either of them. And if he would be receiving an eternally young apprentice to study and serve under him, wouldn't it be more pleasant to have a woman?
For the metahuman-resistant end, she would be, on paper, genetically a metahuman - but with none of the signs of it to immediately reject as foreign or a threat to them. By also being raised heavily in her home culture's less objectionable aspects, she could present a face for accepting and integrating it despite how prevalent prejudices are in that culture. For the Yamamotos themselves, they remained well aware that they would never themselves truly touch the world of the kami - but that the secretive works of the Ordo Maximus could, combined with their own labs, ensure one of their line is accepted.


Naturally, these plans tied together by half-truths and selfish ambitions, built of pride and delusion, wouldn't quite work out perfectly. Miho was split between two misaligned sets of indoctrination, and built with the insight necessary to notice and pretend to follow both. This process added a third point of view on her 18th birthday, where she was given the gift of being killed and flooded with awakened microorganisms, greedily pulling her soul back to its form and hoarding it for their own. Awakening again herself, Miho was now continually, permanently exposed to the Astral world and its impulses, with no way to simply keep her from ever encountering parts of the world counter to their narratives.
Aside from the attempt to grab power through a mouldable apprentice, Hideo's goal in designing Miho was to create a particularly unusual case for ghilani vrykolakiviridae - or HMHVV Strain 1. When the Infection takes, it can have drastically different results keyed to metatype, and can even forcibly cause an Awakening in the right circumstances. Miho's chimeric genetics were to, essentially, 'confuse' the virus... and thus, through close observation, gain new insights into how it decides on what to do with its hosts.


Her mystic education began in earnest after that point, joining business, management, and politics. Her seeming obedience and dedication soon earned her relative freedom - a large part of the Mitsuhama operations are tied tightly to criminal syndicates, after all, and those would be another part of Miho's education. With a decade more spent between those three parts of her life, she eventually developed enough to be viably sent elsewhere on her own, a fact she had been encouraging.
Other tweaks were included for practical reasons. The ability to entirely ignore pain - useful both for preventing interrogation from leaking secrets, and for enhancing her training by letting her push magic well past the point others would be left unconscious. Vastly improved memory - to allow her to better handle learning for both business management and magical practices simultaneously. Reduced need for sleep - to add more time in the day for that learning, and later, for managing the two. A significantly weakened immune system - to help ensure Infection would take. And lastly, an added node in the brain to allow conscious signalling to autonomous emotional reactions.


Seattle was chosen for Miho's new placement due to its relatively chaotic state. With so many different groups jockeying for control, there could be less concentrated opposition to risk their investment, as well as more chances to learn how to thwart their true foes. Advancing MCT and Lodge interests in the area would be proportionally more effective than simply sending her into a more stable, long-term conflict elsewhere. And as for Miho herself, having established she could be trusted to remain loyal and maintain reports, leveraged that trust to get out from under direct supervision for once in her life.
Miho was raised between the three, primarily through mundane education provided by her parents and magical tutoring provided by Hideo to give her a head-start on understanding. She took to matters of expression and manipulation more naturally than a fish to water, though a sense of derealization gradually grew to plague her from the start.


Miho has longed for freedom since she first experienced it in the passing whims of the spirit world, since she found something that might be genuine when she could thoroughly understand her upbringing was not. Leaving entirely simply isn't an option for her, however, and she knows it; no matter what she tries or where she goes, if she truly attempted to break the chain, she would be hunted down and retrieved and be far worse off for it. At the same time, as distasteful as they are, she does hold great potential power to develop from those unbreakable connections, and it would be a waste to throw them away rather than make something better out of them.
With so much direct control and understanding of her own emotions and expressions, she never had the chance to understand what it meant to be genuine - when all of it is a choice she needs to make, what of it isn't manipulation? When she can influence her own feelings by feedback from microexpressions, a far more advanced form of the idea of improving mood by smiling, then what of her feelings are real rather than allowed by choice for personal benefit?


The only question is... what would 'something better' even be?
By the time Miho had reached eighteen, she showed no signs of Awakening on her own. Of age now, she was to be inducted using whatever mysterious methods their Shintoist sponsor had - which was really just killing her via draining and hoping it worked.
 
Set up to be observed very thoroughly, Miho was Infected by a nosferatu member. The concept appeared to work, and the 'seed' strain adapted along three separate paths: some of the virus expected to infect an elf as a banshee, some of it expected to infect an elf as a vampire, and some of it expected to infect a human as a nosferatu. The 'debate', in a manner of speaking, made the process extend slightly longer than a normal Infection should - but it ultimately resolved on reconfiguring her into a banshee. All of this was meticulously recorded, Hideo's lab eagerly grasping for any new insights into their condition and how biology might guide it.
 
She was successfully Awakened during the process, albeit with no sure proof if it was the virus or simply magical stimulation activating late talents. Nonetheless, her magical education properly began after that, continuing across the next decade.
 
Her business management education shifted into practical work, meanwhile. Her own desire to loosen her leash for safer self-discovery led her more towards the criminal elements, using her apparent status as a pureblooded Japanese human to minimize rejection from yakuza clans. The years saw her as a somewhat accomplished human resources manager, as well as a fixer in Neo-Tokyo specialized in networking.
 
Miho's move to Seattle in the later end of that was presented mainly as a way to experience a more diverse set of cultures. No matter their intentions, it's hard to be surrounded and steeped in the cancerous xenophobia of Japan without taking it on - and so, the near-free-city of the UCAS was chosen as direct opposition.
 
For Miho herself, the relative chaos combined with its separation from the rest of the world meant Seattle in particular would offer her both familiarity, yet distance from her family. That want to have more personal freedom was easily expected, and encouraged - no corporate kid is going to survive in the long term without personal ambitions, after all. What was less seen through is that this freedom was also to be a test. Pushed from so early on to become what was wanted, yet having no sense she could trust of what she wanted for herself, she wants to find and understand what that means on her own.


== Narrative Significant Qualities ==
== Narrative Significant Qualities ==

Revision as of 19:19, 23 November 2023

Kadō
Kado.jpeg
Kado token.png
Shintoist Magician
Previously a Fixer
Knows People
Discord@ezene
Redditonomatopus
MetatypeHuman?
Street Cred0
Notoriety1
Public Awareness0
CDP22
D.O.B.August 14th, 2055
Age29
FolderDrive
PriorityMetatype - D
Attributes - E
Magic/Resonance - A
Skills - B
Resources - C
#Max IGs/Ascension1


Character Information

Summary

Kadō is a young human woman who nearly matches the traditional Japanese ideal. With a petite figure, pale skin, and long, black hair, only her vivid green eyes separate her from the image of a yamato nadeshiko. Equally at home in street chic as in the dress of high society, she excels at captivating attention, knowing just how to speak and move to leave the impressions she wants.

For those with wider information sources, Kadō has operated for a few years in Neo-Tokyo as a fixer with rumored but unconfirmed connections to MCT. More recently, she's moved to Seattle for some reason - and despite having only been around a year, she's found her name in an impressive number of circles. This time, however, rather than setting herself up as a fixer, she's decided to take jobs herself as a runner.

Her specialty is social combat. Whether squeezing every bit of value out of a deal, running circles around a security guard's expectations, or convincing a group of workers she's one of their friends without having ever met who she's mimicking, any time Kadō is allowed to speak, she can work. This even holds true in a firefight - rather than ineffectually firing a gun (and risking snapping those thin arms with recoil), she stays back and observes the situation. Her vantage point gives her the chance to urge allies, using that talent for manipulation to cut past their hesitations and prod their instinctive reactions at just the right times. At least one rumor states she pulled off such an accurate 'drill instructor' voice that a number of corpsec jolted up to stand at attention... in the middle of a firefight.

Goals

  • Short-Term: Start doing jobs, both for money and for reputation. Establish herself as someone who can keep up with running rather than just networking.
  • Mid-Term: Accumulate soft and hard power to leverage for her continued... not freedom, but relatively loose leash.
  • Long-Term: Figure out a long-term goal. What does she even want? After doing this for so long and convincing herself to focus on getting out from under the family's thumb, she forgot that she still needs to have something to do afterwards.

Background

Yamamoto Miho is 'adopted', in a sense - she never had parents to begin with, but commissioners, in the form of Yamamoto Kasumi, Yamamoto Kenji, and Fujimori Hideo.

The Yamamotos were in the more Japanese-centric aspects of EVO, which look back to its original roots as Yamatetsu. Despite that, their biases against metahumanity were limited to the lingering momentum of peer pressure.

As wealthy executives, they had more than enough resources to draw on to immerse themselves in their culture's spiritual elements - particularly in the lavish membership of the Ordo Maximus. Mundane themselves, they were happy to have their power and wealth purchase the trappings of Shintoist and Onmyodo spirituality.

It was one of these Shintoists, a proper member, who sought to make a deal with them. Yamamotos Kasumi and Kenji held power over a significant biotech R&D subsidiary, and Fujimori Hideo wanted access to those resources. Miho was thought up as a project to both make use of those resources and establish stronger connections, posed as a way to help make each side of EVO's base a bit more palatable to the other... and to further their own hopes.

For the metahuman-resistant end, she would be, on paper, genetically a metahuman - but with none of the signs of it to immediately reject as foreign or a threat to them. By also being raised heavily in her home culture's less objectionable aspects, she could present a face for accepting and integrating it despite how prevalent prejudices are in that culture. For the Yamamotos themselves, they remained well aware that they would never themselves truly touch the world of the kami - but that the secretive works of the Ordo Maximus could, combined with their own labs, ensure one of their line is accepted.

Aside from the attempt to grab power through a mouldable apprentice, Hideo's goal in designing Miho was to create a particularly unusual case for ghilani vrykolakiviridae - or HMHVV Strain 1. When the Infection takes, it can have drastically different results keyed to metatype, and can even forcibly cause an Awakening in the right circumstances. Miho's chimeric genetics were to, essentially, 'confuse' the virus... and thus, through close observation, gain new insights into how it decides on what to do with its hosts.

Other tweaks were included for practical reasons. The ability to entirely ignore pain - useful both for preventing interrogation from leaking secrets, and for enhancing her training by letting her push magic well past the point others would be left unconscious. Vastly improved memory - to allow her to better handle learning for both business management and magical practices simultaneously. Reduced need for sleep - to add more time in the day for that learning, and later, for managing the two. A significantly weakened immune system - to help ensure Infection would take. And lastly, an added node in the brain to allow conscious signalling to autonomous emotional reactions.

Miho was raised between the three, primarily through mundane education provided by her parents and magical tutoring provided by Hideo to give her a head-start on understanding. She took to matters of expression and manipulation more naturally than a fish to water, though a sense of derealization gradually grew to plague her from the start.

With so much direct control and understanding of her own emotions and expressions, she never had the chance to understand what it meant to be genuine - when all of it is a choice she needs to make, what of it isn't manipulation? When she can influence her own feelings by feedback from microexpressions, a far more advanced form of the idea of improving mood by smiling, then what of her feelings are real rather than allowed by choice for personal benefit?

By the time Miho had reached eighteen, she showed no signs of Awakening on her own. Of age now, she was to be inducted using whatever mysterious methods their Shintoist sponsor had - which was really just killing her via draining and hoping it worked.

Set up to be observed very thoroughly, Miho was Infected by a nosferatu member. The concept appeared to work, and the 'seed' strain adapted along three separate paths: some of the virus expected to infect an elf as a banshee, some of it expected to infect an elf as a vampire, and some of it expected to infect a human as a nosferatu. The 'debate', in a manner of speaking, made the process extend slightly longer than a normal Infection should - but it ultimately resolved on reconfiguring her into a banshee. All of this was meticulously recorded, Hideo's lab eagerly grasping for any new insights into their condition and how biology might guide it.

She was successfully Awakened during the process, albeit with no sure proof if it was the virus or simply magical stimulation activating late talents. Nonetheless, her magical education properly began after that, continuing across the next decade.

Her business management education shifted into practical work, meanwhile. Her own desire to loosen her leash for safer self-discovery led her more towards the criminal elements, using her apparent status as a pureblooded Japanese human to minimize rejection from yakuza clans. The years saw her as a somewhat accomplished human resources manager, as well as a fixer in Neo-Tokyo specialized in networking.

Miho's move to Seattle in the later end of that was presented mainly as a way to experience a more diverse set of cultures. No matter their intentions, it's hard to be surrounded and steeped in the cancerous xenophobia of Japan without taking it on - and so, the near-free-city of the UCAS was chosen as direct opposition.

For Miho herself, the relative chaos combined with its separation from the rest of the world meant Seattle in particular would offer her both familiarity, yet distance from her family. That want to have more personal freedom was easily expected, and encouraged - no corporate kid is going to survive in the long term without personal ambitions, after all. What was less seen through is that this freedom was also to be a test. Pushed from so early on to become what was wanted, yet having no sense she could trust of what she wanted for herself, she wants to find and understand what that means on her own.

Narrative Significant Qualities

Positive

  • Infected (Banshee): Kadō doesn't drink... wine.
  • Prototype Transhuman: Miho was designed and biologically constructed, not conceived and born. Part of this has blended human and elven genetics; her natural state is one that appears, externally, to be a perfectly normal human.

Negative

  • SINner (Corporate) (Mitsuhama): Kadō is one of the elites, born in an ivory tower with everything she could want served to her through the suffering of regular people... or so many in the shadows might think, anyway.

Run History

NameGMMetaplotDate of Run
Sanctum SunderedEva3 April 2085
Fish in a BucketAnumatiDeep Hunting30 March 2085
Plucking A BirdAnumatiDeep Hunting18 March 2085
The Bill Comes DueArchtmag12 March 2085
Dear HelenaAsmodeus1 March 2085
Runnin' from the Dock of the BayLHOG27 February 2085
Chain MailSleeveyLa Famille Du Peintre10 February 2085
Alea Ecta EstFangblade_30 December 2084
Party BalloonSyphilen29 December 2084
Hot Potato (Chips)Sample Text9 December 2084
Tying A Yoke to YamadaLHOG30 November 2084

Affiliations

Contacts

Contact Connection Loyalty Archetype Profession Aspects Chips
Silas Vespasiano 5 2 Fixer Black Lodge Fixer Black Magician, High Society Socialite, Made Man, Politico, Talismonger, Theory Savant Even
Amadou Zheng 5 2 Fixer MCT's Magical Middle Manager All for the Bottom Line, The Boss is the Boss, Corpo Connections, Wannabe Crime Lord, Fell Through the Cracks, Can't Spell "Smuggler" Without "Smug", Lawyer Up, Livin' the Dream, Eyes on the Prize, Not on the Bodies, Not so Big Anymore Even
Ryuichi Umezawa 6 1 Fixer Gang Leader Armorer services, Fake SIN, Drugs, Cyberdecks, Equipment brand: Shiawase, Blackmail, Vehicles Even
Kakei Steve 6 1 Fixer Fixer Lawyer, Legal Connections, I Know Many Things, Weeb Swordsfan, Yakuza Networker, Deltaware Dealer, I Know The Best Cyberware Even
Karahashi Atsutada 4 3 Fixer(G,N,K,A) Mita-gumi Lieutenant Mita-Gumi Lieutenant, Yakuza Supplier - Armor, Yakuza Supplier - Weapons, Friends in all places, Talislegger, "Friend" of Renraku, Unquestionable Loyalty Even
Yoshinaga Chikara 3 1 Fixer(N,A,K,G) Yoshinaga-gumi Oyabun; Fixer Hard To Reach, Tech-savvy, Japanocorp connections, Hidden Technomancy, Veteran Yakuza, Bellevue Based Even
Fiendest 2 3 Fixer HMHVV Fanatic Wanted, Infected Organizer, Lavawalker, Terrordome, Darkdweller Even
Bulldog Black 2 2 Fixer Semi-retired Security Professional Security, Street Docs, Tenacious Investigating Even
June Sano 4 2 Legwork Psionic Instructor and Parazoologist Psionic, Scholarly, Yakuza, Parazoologist, Master Conjurer Even
Liam Montgomery 4 2 Service Lawyer Cui Bono, Bona Fide, Bona Vacantia, Corpus Delicti, Habeas Corpus, Amicus Curiae Even
'Doc' Mortimer 5 2 Custom(G,A,K,N) Street Doc Biotechnologist, Advanced 'Ware, Black Market Pipeline, Forbidden Gear, Cybertechnologist, Cyberlimbs Even
Smith 4 1 Gear Talismonger Reagent Harvester, Initiation Room, Warded Panic Room, Foci Customizer, Shinto Tradition Even
C1ph3r 3 3 Legwork Decker Infobroker, Decker, Nerd, Conspiracy Theorist Even


Organizations

Allies

Enemies

In Character Information

Symbols and Signatures

Matrix Search Table

Threshold Result
1
3
6

Shadow Community Table

Threshold Result
1
3
5

Assensing Table

Threshold Result
1
2
3
4
5


SINs

Appearance

Clothing

Matrix Persona

Character Plot Hooks

Here are characteristics of the character that GMs may take advantage of to add complications to runs, or to otherwise use when in use. If you want to use them in unrelated to runs, please ask first.

Aspect Information Related Run(s)
Aspect 1
Aspect 2
Aspect 3
Aspect 4
Aspect 5

Media Mentions

ShadowGrid Profile Comments

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